Urban Political Machines
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Immigration
Urbanization
Industrialization
Expanded Democracy
Jacob Riis
Jacob Riis
Machine Bosses
• Examples
– William Tweed, NYC
– G. W. Plunkitt, NYC
– Abe Reuf, San Francisco
– Pendergasts, Kansas City
– Daley, Chicago
Urban Party Machines
• Great Boss Names
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John ‘Bathhouse’ Coughlin (Chicago)
Michael ‘Hinky Dink’ Keena (Boston)
Iz Durham (Philly)
‘Sunny Jim’ McNichol (Phil)
William ‘Boss’ Tweed (NYC)
‘Slippery Dick’ Connolly (NYC)
‘Silent’ Charlie Murphy (NYC)
‘Diamond Joe’ Quimby (Springfield)
Urban Party Machines
• Industrialization, immigration, expanding
democracy, + need for urban services.
• Hierarchical with a “boss” at the top
• City divided into wards and precincts
• Clientele parties—machine provided jobs or
help with housing in exchange for votes
• Supported by working class and immigrant
voters
Urban Party Machines
• Patronage
• Precinct-based politics
– Precinct captain—provided information
about residents’ needs (pub level politics)
– Means for career advancement
• District elections, large councils
– Small districts were ethnically homogenous
– Easier to organize
Machine Hierarchy
Boss/Mayor
1 or ‘team’
Alderman 1
24 wards
Precinct 1
400 voters
Precinct 2
300 voters
Precinct 3
30 of these per ward
Machine Hierarchy
• Precinct captains expected to know all
the voters
• Ward Alderman (council person)
selected precinct captains
• Alderman served as Ward Party
Committee Chair to supervise captains
How do you organize a
precinct
• 200 – 500 people
• Where do they gather?
• ??
Precincts and Pubs
• Personal, informal politics
• NYC 1 pub for every 515 residents
• Chicago 1 pub for every 335
– ½ of city population in pub every day
• 1 for every 50 males
Precincts and Pubs
• 11 of 24 NYC alderman owned pubs in
1890
• 1 of every 3 in Milwaukee owned pubs
in 1902
• 1 of every 3 in Detroit owned pubs
Urban Party Machines
• Patronage
– “if you go along, you get along”
– loyalty purchased with material rewards
• turkey on thanksgiving, coal for heating,
assistance with police, a job....
• neighborhood leader tracks needs, delivers
blocks of votes to party
Urban Party Machines
• Patronage
– 1900-1920 20% of urban job growth public
sector jobs
Patronage
• Boss could distribute jobs & more
• Some voters got menial jobs
• Captains got low pay job, alderman
(ward committeemen) better jobs
– Police, fire, sanitation, construction, road
crews, parks, etc.
– Alderman owned businesses that
contracted with city
Chicago 1970s
• Cook County Democratic Central
Committee
– 30,000 jobs to distribute
– 8,000 city of Chicago jobs
– 1 ward committeeman w/ 2,000 jobs
Chicago 1970s
– 50 wards (Districts)
• 500-600 jobs in each ward
– $3,600 elevator operator
– $6,000 p year stenographer
– $25,000 department director
– Today, mayor has 900 – 1,200 jobs to fill
Jobs
• 1890s – 1900s public jobs paid better
than private
• 5% of all NYC jobs cpatronage
• 20% of urban job growth public jobs
1900-1920
• In Chicago, NYC, etc. Irish got
disproportionate share of patronage
Patronage
• Jobs and more:
– Rent money, food, coal, heating oil, social
solidarity, police protection, business
licenses, homeless shelter, fix traffic
tickets…
Urban Party Machines
• Everything dependent on winning
elections
• Getting out the vote
• Voting the party line
Urban Party Machines
• Partisan elections, party ballot
– Machine required electing party loyalists
• Elections were held with state and
federal elections
– Straight-ticket ballots—benefited all levels
• Corruption
– Some stuffing ballot boxes, bribery, and
kickbacks, and graft (‘honest graft’)
Ballot images
Urban Party Machines
• Graft
– “selective” policing in exchange for $
– no-bid contracts awarded w/ kickbacks
– no-bid contracts to machine leaders
• construction, cement, furnishings
– city grants loyalists utility monopolies
• in exchange for $$
– speculate in lands city will purchase
Urban Party Machines
• Machines benefited some illegal
businesses
• Also provided many services and
building projects
• Failed to address problems some key
problems
• Fraud
Urban Party Machines
• Demise of machines
• Inefficient
– who benefited
• in national politics...
• any evidence of upward mobility?
– who harmed?
• businesses, taxpayers
• what reaction?
Urban Party Machines
• Who benefited?
– assimilation of immigrants in a hostile
society
• John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald example
• Irish benefited at expense of Jews, Italians, etc.
– voting by ethnic, not party concerns
– machines opposed blacks, labor
– most machines opposed needed social &
economic reforms.
Urban Party Machines
• From group conflict perspective
• 1) Immigrants
– The others; mobs in city, Catholics, Jews,
don’t speak English
• 2) “WASP” Nativists
– Prohibition, restrict immigration, fear of
‘anarchists,’
– Progressivism
Urban Party Machines
• Demise of Party Machines (post 1900)
• Not total, but not at all the same
– Chicago, Albany NY, parts of MA...
– NJ
– Much harder to organize a city with patronage,
selective policing, overt corruption
– WHY? How would you change things to wipe
out machines?
Urban Party Machines
• Demise of Machines (post 1900)
• Rival groups
– Labor, legit. business
• Increased affluence
• Slower immigration
• Rise of Federal role in social services
– New Deal 1930s
The Reform Movement
• Who were they
– Rural legislators
– Upper status urban professionals
– Upper status urban women
• Still w/o right to vote
– Progressive moralists
– Religious activists
The Reform Movement
• Broad Progressive “Agenda”
– Suffrage
– Work place safety
– Food safety
– Child labor laws
– Labor rights
– Prohibition
– Political institutions
Reform Movement
• The Machine City (summary):
– very large council
– district based representation
– council with control over hiring, firing,
spending
– High turnout local elections
– Machine power = majority on council
• maybe Mayor matters....
The Reform Movement
• National Municipal
League
– Model City Charter
– ‘Business’ model of
how to run cities
– get‘politics’ out of
administration
– ‘no partisan way to
pick up garbage,
sweep streets’
The Reform Movement
• A menu of items that could go in a city
charter
– 1) Merit-based civil service
• de-personalize offices, universalistic standards,
exams for hiring, promotions
– 2) Detailed accounting systems
• sealed competitive bids, publicize transactions,
limit elected official influence on spending
The Reform Movement
• Menu
– 3) Take power from council
• make part time job, independent commissions to
administer services….appointed offices
• City Manager
– 4) Reduce size of councils
• from 50 - 100 to less than 10
The Reform Movement
• Menu
– 5) Decentralize public power
• Checks and balances
• Commissions appointed by state leg
• Remove service provision
– Special districts
– Private services
–Some reformers sought public
controlled utilities
The Reform Movement
• 6) At-large, off year elections
– Council elected city-wide rather than from
geographic districts
– Elect in years when no national contests
on ballot to lower turnout
• Only ‘knowledgeable’ voters show up
The Reform Movement
• 7) Weaken partisan hold on elections
– Office block ballots,
– secret ballots,
– ban party endorsements,
– allow cross-filing,
– direct primaries,
– non-partisan contests
The Reform Movement
• 8) Voter registration
– Long before election day (1 year)
– Exclude people who are new residents,
non-citizens
• Nothing in US Constitution regarding right to
vote in local elections for non-citizens
– Right based on race added later, gender (sort of),
age added
Reform Movement
• 9) Limit power of local elected exec.
– Over budget
– No veto
– No appointment power
– Simply another council member
– Some reformers sought strong mayor
Reform Movement
• 10) Direct Democracy
– Initiative
– Referendum
– Recall
– “End run” around party machine control
– Cities (LA) had initiative before states
Progressive era presidents
TR:1901-1909
WW:1913-21
Progressive era reforms
• direct primary
elections
• income tax
• direct election of US
Senators
• anti-trust laws
• food and drug laws
• child labor laws
• Education reforms
• YMCA, YWCA
• ‘Muckraking’
journalists
• regulations of
railroads
• National forests &
natl parks
• women’s rights
Progressive era ‘reforms’
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eugenics
prohibition
Jim Crow
end to immigration
• Plessey v Ferguson
• revival of KKK
Municipal Reform Movement
• A continuum
– Some cities adopted one or two reforms
– “Reform City” has most / all reforms in
charter
– Western, smaller, suburban, newer = more
reforms
Reform Movement
• What effect on politics today?
• Institutions are different at national,
state & local level due to early 1900s
reform era
Reform Movement
• What effect on politics today?
• Federal
– Income tax, direct election of Senate
• State
– Direct democracy, primaries, civil service
• Local
– Reform city charters, most smaller places
“Council-Manager” form
Reform Movement
• What effect on politics today?
• Local
– Increased ‘red tape’ (Bureaucracy)
– Lower participation
– Lower public spending (?)
– Cities ‘less political”
• Is that less democratic?